


miles from the sea

by Lake (beyond_belief)



Series: been rearranged [2]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Curtain Fic, Epilogue, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 18:33:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21286262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Lake
Summary: What they do after getting out the Defense Corps.
Relationships: Brad Colbert/Ray Person
Series: been rearranged [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1525439
Comments: 4
Kudos: 86





	miles from the sea

**Author's Note:**

> This is legit just curtainfic, guys. 
> 
> [Dog, basically.](https://thepotatotornado.tumblr.com/post/188617277356)

"You know," Ray says, kicking snow off his boots in the doorway to the mudroom, "if I'd truly understood what the weather would be like here, I would not have come."

"Sure you would," Brad replies with a smile. He moves out of the draft of cold air, then folds another sweatshirt fresh from the dryer. 

"No. I don't do well in snow. I'm from the South." Ray tugs his gloves from his hands, frowning. "And what the fuck, you're from California."

Brad ducks the glove that comes sailing at his head, walks over, and reaches out to unzip Ray's heavy coat. Snow falls in clumps from the folds of the sleeves and melts in little puddles on the concrete floor. He moves his feet out of the way. "Given the choice, I would have taken you back to California, but we're still technically property of the Ranger program for another few years."

"Stuck in _Alaska_," Ray huffs. Brad knows he doesn't mean it, though, and it's clear from his expression that he's just complaining to complain. Brad curls his hands in the lapels of the coat and tugs Ray in for a kiss. 

The house they're occupying is small, but still larger than Brad's instructor quarters in Juneau and luxurious compared to the concrete square in Anchorage. There's an actual kitchen, where Brad stood perplexed at first - after years of eating in mess halls, he was expected to remember how to operate a stove as old as the one occupying this room? "It's older than I am," he said to Ray, the first day they'd been in the house.

"Whatever, dude, I'm sure I can make it work, and you'll get fed," Ray replied, crossing to fiddle with the knobs. One fell off and pinged across the tile. "Yeah, okay, maybe we won't use that particular burner."

Stove aside, Brad actually doesn't mind it here; it's the most privacy he's had in years. Almost always being around other people had never bothered him until there was only one specific person he wanted to be around, and preferably naked with. Now he can reach for Ray whenever the mood strikes him. And it works both ways; Ray's usually no more than an arm's length away if they're in the same room, usually leaning up against Brad in some way no matter what they're doing. 

Brad skims his teeth over Ray's bottom lip. "What's the situation outside?"

"I cleared the sidewalk and the porch, and a few square feet for the dog to piss in, but it's still coming down like a motherfucker." Ray frowns, and Brad feels it more than he sees it. "Fucking snow."

There's a barking at the door and Ray opens it just enough for the dog to wiggle through the gap into the mudroom. Ray tackles him with a towel while Brad watches, frowning. "Are we ever going to give him a name?"

"He has a name."

"Opening the door and hollering 'Dog!' out into the night doesn't make that his name, Ray."

Ray rolls his eyes and scratches around the dog's ears for a second, then tells him to go on and nudges him towards the door of the main house. He hangs the towel on a hook. "Works well enough."

Dog had shown up as a stray one day, smaller than he is now, and they'd fed him from the porch for a week before he would come inside and let Ray get him cleaned up. He'd been a little more wary of Brad, and it took another week before he'd approach, and push his muzzle hesitantly against Brad's hand. "His eyes are sad," Ray said, as Brad gently stroked the dog's head. 

"It's cold out there. He's probably seen a lot." 

Brad finishes the last of his folding and picks up the basket. "Hurry up with your boots, you're letting all the cold air into the house," he says over his shoulder to Ray as he goes in.

"Fuck off, Brad," Ray calls back, and Brad chuckles to himself the whole way up the stairs to the bedroom.

*

Most of Brad's days here are the same: startle awake from unsettling dreams he can't control, do cardio routine immediately to shake off the restless feeling, make coffee and protein shake while standing sweaty and panting in the kitchen. Give Dog his breakfast if Ray hasn't gotten out of bed yet, then work on whatever needs working on until lunch. Repeat, with minor variations, until dinner.

They have so much free time that Brad occasionally feels paralysed by it. He's still not sure how years of following orders gave way to this ramshackle house with Ray in it, nothing life-threatening to occupy their time, no one to listen to but themselves. Ray seemed to take to it right away, enjoying the hours he could spend stretched out on the couch in front of the fireplace, doing nothing but whatever thinking went on in his mind. Brad felt restless for months and found projects to apply himself to: fixing the second toilet, installing shelves in the walk-in closet, building an actual mudroom out of what was a few sheets of plywood when they arrived and adding a secondhand stacked washer and dryer that he'd repaired himself. The house is old and drafty, in need of many minor fixes, so making it first livable and then comfortable took up most of their time for a while. Then Dog arrived, and integrating him into their lives took another few weeks. Now it's snow season, so one or both of them have to clear snow most days, or stare out the window at the ice. 

If they so go into town, it's just after noon, when the day is warmest. It's twenty minutes by the easiest mode of transportation: the snowmobile someone before them had left in the garage, broken down. Two days' work had gotten it running again. Brad figures they could have fixed it faster were the garage warmer. 

They've got a generator and a wood-burning stove for if the power goes out, but outages have been few and far between, so most nights they turn on the little television and move the rabbit ears around until the signal comes in clear. In the beginning, they'd left it on most of the day just for the noise, until Ray growled that he couldn't stand to hear about what part of the world was being destroyed anymore, and snapped it off. _Fair enough_, Brad thought, and now they only watch in the evenings. 

Dog is on the sofa as Brad crosses into the kitchen to start dinner, curled nose to tail but watching him with wide eyes. Brad can hear sounds from the mudroom and figures Ray must have gone out to shovel again. The snow has let up somewhat, but the view beyond their small windows is still mostly whiteness. He looks despite this, through the window above the kitchen sink, and sees that there's a dip in the endless drifts where Ray's cleared off the concrete path that goes around most of the house, and a little beyond that the empty patch for Dog to go out in. The sky, a pale grey all day, is darkening now, and he can't make out any snow currently falling. 

He hears the sounds of Ray behind him and says, "If it's not coming down like a motherfucker tomorrow, one of us will have to take the snowmobile to town for supplies."

"Yeah." There's a swishing sound, like fabric, and Brad glances over his shoulder to see Ray pulling his hoodie up over his head. "Too hot," he says, at Brad's inquiring look, readjusting his t-shirt where it's bunched up. 

Brad raises his eyebrows and Ray grins, flushing. "Isn't that pot going to burn?" he asks as Brad advances on him. 

"It's only water, and I haven't turned the stove on yet," Brad replies. He slides his arms around Ray's waist and pulls him close. They kiss, unhurried, and then into the shell of Ray's ear, Brad whispers, "You're not lonely out here, right?"

Ray gives him the _you're an idiot_ look. "I thought we were about to get freaky, not talk about our feelings." 

Brad shrugs slightly and trails his fingertips slowly up and down Ray's spine. 

"It's not lonely because I'm not alone," Ray says, and sets his teeth sharply to Brad's bottom lip as if to punctuate his reply before sliding their mouths together in another kiss. His body pressed against Brad's is hot and slightly damp with sweat from the act of manual snow removal, and Brad slips his hands up the back of Ray's t-shirt just to feel that skin against his palms. 

"What happened to you making me dinner," Ray laughs, not moving away. 

"It's still early." Brad turns them and walks Ray backwards towards the kitchen table. He'd made it himself; it's very sturdy, and Ray's smile is wide as he boosts himself up onto it. He tugs Brad back in close by the front of his sweatshirt, then kisses him until Brad is nearly woozy from the lack of air, quick breaths drawn in between messy kisses. Brad never kissed someone so much or so often before he and Ray moved in together. 

Once, a few weeks after they'd secured the house and finished hauling in necessary fixtures, Ray stretched out on top of him on the sofa. They'd kissed, open-mouthed and sharing air until Brad felt like he was back in some underwater exercise, ignoring the screaming of his lungs in pursuit of the goal. Which was apparently Ray's goal, because when Brad felt his eyes start to roll back in his head, Ray put his mouth to Brad's ear and asked, "You don't think about him, do you?"

"Barely thought about him even then," was Brad's answer. That seemed to satisfy Ray, and they haven't said a word about it since.

Mouth tender, he nuzzles his face down Ray's neck, then pulls Ray's t-shirt up and over his head in one quick movement. Ray shivers at the sudden exposure of skin to air. "It's the warmest room in the house but still not warm enough to go naked," he says, and Brad laughs against the hollow of his throat. He feels Ray's fingers slide through his hair. 

"Brad, dude," Ray sighs, but that's all, as Brad slips a hand into his sweatpants and curls it firmly around Ray's cock. This too is familiar; there's not much to do out here besides work on the house and their hobbies, and have sex - so they have a lot of it. By now he knows every inch of Ray's body as well as he knows his own. 

Ray's leg hooks around the back of Brad's knee and holds him there, close as Brad jerks him off leisurely, going slowly just because he can. He likes feeling Ray's small movements as the occasional shiver becomes more frequent trembling, while Brad nuzzles at his neck and adjusts his grip and speed the closer Ray gets to the edge. "Brad, what the fuck," Ray gasps, as Brad eases up. "Trying to drive me to an early grave?"

"Hardly," Brad laughs in his ear. He lifts his hand and licks his palm, making the motion deliberate, before he starts up again. Ray groans and twists against him, then grabs the front of Brad's sweatshirt again to tug him into a kiss.

*

Dog stands next to Brad and watches with concern as Brad completes his one hundred crunches, and sticks his nose in Brad's ear when Brad flips over to do his pushup sets. "No, go sit down," Brad huffs, but the dog doesn't move. Brad can see his tail wagging slowly.

He makes it twenty pushups in before Dog tries to crawl underneath him and lick his face. "Fine, fine," Brad groans, and rolls over onto his back, ruffling the dog's fur around his ears. "You're fucking ridiculous, you know that?"

"Are you talking to the dog again?" Ray calls. Brad hears various rattling noises from the kitchen.

"I'm trying to do my circuit!"

Ray comes into the room with a giant bowl cradled against his hip; it smells like popcorn. "You know the only exercise he understands is o-u-t-s-i-d-e," he spells out. "Want some of this?"

"Sure."

They turn on the television for the night. Dog jumps up on the sofa and curls up in his normal corner, and Brad takes the other, leaving Ray to sit in the middle. "I think I've figured out how to do the rewiring in the garage so that you can run the heater more than an hour a day," Ray says, as he sits cross-legged with the bowl in his lap, one knee resting on Brad's thigh. "Then you can whittle that dresser for the bedroom."

"You don't whittle a dresser, Ray," Brad replies patiently, and kisses Ray's cheek when Ray grins. "Also your beard is out of control."

"I'm taking advantage of the fact that we're allowed to grow fucking full-on facial hair."

That's fair, Brad figures. Not to mention the fact they're basically living in the wilderness, and looking a little wild goes along with that. He rubs his own beard, neatly trimmed. "The beard looks hot on you," Ray says. He stuffs more popcorn in his mouth.

"You say that every day."

"It's true, homes."

"I'm going to shave it off."

"You are not." 

Ray's right - it's been cold enough that Brad likes the extra barrier between his face and the wind. On the television screen, the news turns over to show the most recent kaiju landing, on a sparsely populated stretch of Panamanian coast. They watch helicopters fly over the dark brown bulk of it, an indecipherable mess where half of the spike-studded head had been. 

"How many scientists you think they got on this now?" Ray asks, fishing popcorn from the bowl without looking away from the screen, where haz-mat tents are being erected around the kaiju, and people are visible only as the white shapes of their protective suits. 

"Must be hundreds."

"And they've hardly figured out shit." 

Brad reaches for some popcorn. "Our job was never to ask why or how, just to kill monsters."

Ray mutters something unfavorable about the nature of the Breach, then changes the channel. They get about a dozen on a good day, and half that or less in a snowstorm. The clearest one tonight is showing some old black and white movie with Spencer Tracy. Dog makes a loud snuffling noise on the other side of Ray, clearly dreaming about something, and Brad sees Ray stroke a slow thumb over the soft fur on Dog's nose for a moment. "What do you think dogs dream about?" Ray asks. His attention is still on the television screen. 

"Simple things. I hope."

Ray leans his head on Brad's shoulder. "Yeah, me too."


End file.
